Masters in Marketing Procurement Series In Partnership With RightSpend

Booking.com’s Marta Matney on her relationship-driven approach to agencies category management

“I think we’re ready to challenge the traditional aspect of scope negotiations. It’s really about how we [generate efficiencies] through collaborative relationships.”

A fascination with people and connections

Most of us fall into procurement rather than choosing it from the outset, and that’s true for Booking.com’s Marta Matney, based in Amsterdam.

Archaeology was her childhood dream job, but a bachelor’s degree in the subject taught Matney that whilst unearthing the lives of everyday people was a fascinating prospect, a future of “digging in a hole all day” was not.

Her Masters in European and American Studies continued to explore human interactions through a different lens, and this remained the common thread as she moved into her early career in events management.

She found the mix of strategic planning, operational management and people interaction in the events field absorbing: “I like finding those connections between people, but I’m also a person who likes to get the job done.”

Deciding that she wanted a broader view of marketing beyond events, and seeing a match to her skills and preferences, she made the move into Marketing Procurement.

Over the last five years at Booking.com, she’s applied her focus on the human aspect of our discipline to great effect.

The human aspect in marketing procurement

Matney is very clear about the role of marketing procurement. She sees us as facilitators of partnerships that deliver results; as matchmakers, relationship counsellors and problem solvers in the dynamic between agencies and marketing clients.

She’s firmly grounded in procurement’s role to deliver cost efficiencies, and she frames this responsibility in terms of creating a collaborative, sustainable safe space for agency and client to tackle cost together.

To do this, in Matney’s opinion, we must consider both the cost aspect and the human aspect of our work as equally important.

“I’m a really strong advocate that really good relationships and…collaboration actually deliver the best savings,” she reflects, going on to explain that strong partnerships require clear, open and honest communication to deliver benefits for both parties.

The problem of the revolving door of agency pitches

Fostering strong partnerships is also in procurement’s own best interest.

As Matney observes, going to market for a new agency is highly resource-intensive for internal teams, so “it’s in your interest to have as few pitches as possible, and the best partners.”

Procurement teams running two to three RFPs per quarter aren’t procurement teams with the time to invest in best practice agency onboarding, for example, as Matney points out.

Agencies constantly responding to pitch requests are equally exhausted and increasingly frustrated, Matney notes, citing personal experience as well as industry analysis of the damage this can cause.

“Agencies talk” she summarises, so creating a reputation for constant re-pitching rapidly erodes good will across the agency landscape.

Despite this, going to market is most often seen as the solution when agency-client success isn’t happening, rather than investing time to understand and address root causes on both sides of the partnership.

Recognising an ongoing “hamster wheel” of pitching at Booking.com, driven by adhoc sourcing exercises, hurried onboarding and rapid relationship failure, Matney and the team developed a relationship-focused intervention to stop the agency revolving door.

Developing a mutual feedback loop

Booking.com’s solution is seemingly simple, a tried-and-true procurement tool: a 360-degree feedback survey.

Working hand-in-hand with Marketing leadership, the team developed a simple nine question tool using a five-point Likert scale, seeking mutual feedback on key topics like communication, team setup, sustainability, diversity, cost efficiency and operational effectiveness.

Results are coded as red, amber or green, and verbatim feedback is anonymised and summarised to maintain confidentiality. Procurement facilitates the review meeting, on a quarterly or bi-annual basis.

Where Matney’s approach differs from the norm is in the deliberate separation of 360-degree feedback from performance-based review .

In fact, she has what she calls an “allergic reaction” when I use the term “performance review,” explaining that the survey process is explicitly framed as separate to the evaluation of project-level performance.

Matney also avoids the term “performance improvement plan,” preferring to talk in terms of a mutually-agreed action plan for both parties to invest in working better together.

In Matney’s view, this positioning is absolutely critical to create the psychological safety required for collaborative problem-solving.

An early implementation of the tool without this deliberate position led to a “love fest” of complimentary feedback from the agency team, and a pitch process within the following six months.

Procurement as relationship counsellor

Matney likens procurement’s role in the 360-survey process to the work of a relationship counsellor.

Facilitating the 360-survey process creates an environment for honest communication that doesn’t push for knee-jerk solutions such as going back to market. “[We’re] almost like a therapist; [we] don’t necessarily tell you the solutions, but [we] ask the right questions.”

Matney acknowledges that it can take a couple of cycles for everyone to feel comfortable enough to share concerns openly, especially on the agency side.

Typically, agencies will score clients higher than vice versa, so Matney sees the first orange and red flags from the agency side as a positive step. “It’s an enlightened moment,” Matney reflects, as this is when the transformational change begins.

Communication and hygiene issues are resolved collaboratively, and can give way to innovation, creativity and underlying trust.

It’s also the moment when procurement can start to recognise patterns on the client side that go broader than one partnership and raise them internally so that Booking.com can become a better client.

Matney goes further, sharing that “the best service and agency relationships that we have is where actually agencies scored us at some point lower than we scored them, because that gives us a chance to step up… we want to work with the best agencies in class. We want to be the best client in class.”

Impact and planned expansion

The Beat Survey process at Booking. com has unquestionably delivered results. Pitching frequency has reduced dramatically over an 18-month period.

Savings delivery in this model has increased versus constant pitching; Matney can’t share specifics but confirms that the difference is material.

In the current macro-economic climate, with the pressures of digital expansion and the promise of Gen AI, the need to make budgets go further will never change.

As Matney says, “I think we’re ready to challenge the traditional aspect of scope negotiations. It’s really about how we [generate efficiencies] through collaborative relationships.”

In 2025 she intends to showcase her approach internally, expanding into other marketing spends at Booking. com, and sharing learnings externally with peers.

It’s Matney’s belief that bringing this relationship-first philosophy into Marketing Procurement’s mainstream can help us grow as a discipline.

We can continue to respond to the commercial pressures of our organisations, whilst also bringing a more nuanced understanding of human connections to our work.

Relationships

When Booking.com goes to market for a new agency these days, it’s a calm, rational, informed decision, based on a 6-12 month period of trying to resolve relationship challenges.

The ongoing nature of the procurement-facilitated dialogue means that agency break-ups are more mature, carefully managed and less abrupt, allowing both sides time to plan for the transition, commercially, and yes, also emotionally.

This tends to mean that even after a partnership ends, a good feeling remains between the parties.

This mindset is perfectly attuned to the interconnectedness of Booking’s business model, as Matney explains, because Booking.com’s agency suppliers are also potential Booking. com customers.

“Did you have a good experience with Booking? Was it in your work life, or was it on your holiday?” she asks, adding “We always want [agencies] to have a good experience with Booking, and to know that they are welcome back in either capacity.”

It comes back to Matney’s core belief that the interactions between humans are central to how we successfully do business, together.

Marta Matney is Global Category Lead, Brand and Communications Marketing, Booking.com